Drought Update

Drought Update: Great job Healdsburg on leading the way on conservation goals! In the month of March the residents and businesses of Healdsburg solidly hit their conservation goal of 20% – in fact they were the only city to meet their conservation targets!

Other communities are starting to respond and moving to conservation but more needs to be done to meet goals and avoid the worst impacts of the drought. Let’s not forget that when we conserve water we help fish and other river wildlife survive this drought. We humans can make it through – our lawns might suffer, but we won’t perish like our finned friends if we don’t embrace conservation when we experience droughts.

As of April 22, Lake Mendocino storage levels were up to 48,856 acre feet or just over 50% of normal storage capacity and our storage is still gaining 111.4 acre feet per day. One acre foot equals 325,851 gallons and traditionally was compared to what a typical family of four would use each year. BUT in the Russian River, we average 114 gallons per person per day so in our watershed it would serve 7.83 people each year. Now if we practiced 20% conservation we could stretch that same acre foot to serve 9.8 people, so it is easy to see how far we can stretch the water we have until we get more if we all conserve 20%! [Contributed by Russian Riverkeeper]